Pammla

This is the summary of conversation between Pammla and Ricardo as part of the pre-workshop interaction. Read her responses and views on issues related to evaluation of ICTs.

What constitutes credible evaluation and acceptable evidence in your context?

Working as a Professor at the University of Saskatchewan I teach health policy evaluation, among other things. For me credibility is tied to when we do evaluation – being included from beginning to the end of the program; it needs to be inclusive and integrated to the entire project. It cannot come in only at the end. It refers to the process that threads throughout the project. The evidence can be documented through storytelling and photo-voice. I come from a quantitative background and have learned to value these alternatives. Currently, I am teaching evaluation to Aboriginal communities. We have prepared a manual that emphasizes video, and story telling. Which is ideal to work with youth since they can be reluctant to write, but eager to take photos or record stories.

How do you currently do M&E? What methods, approaches, etc. are you required / do you choose to use?As I mentioned earlier, I use a wide range of conventional evaluation approaches, although I am more interested in the alternative and the qualitative ones.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the way you currently do M&E?I use a lot of triangulation, to pick up on what each method brings or does not. If one system lacks content validity, we will balance it with qualitative methods to understand the content. The challenge is that of the methods some are quite new, so I follow-up with authors due to a lack of documented examples. It is like “cherry picking.”

How familiar you are with the following evaluation approaches?

GEM (Gender Evaluation Methodology)

Yes, I am familiar with it. I use parts of it.

What experience have you had in gender evaluation and gender training?

None.

What is your level of understanding and experience conducting gender analysis?

I consider myself as an “Advanced-beginner”, considering that my ranking something like this: a novice someone who is just learning; a beginner someone who needs advise but can do 80% on her own, and beyond that are the the experts.

What experience have you had in gender evaluation and gender training?

I have taken gender training with Health Canada and on the Status of Women. I was involved in a gender evaluation in the Caribbean 7 years ago, where I conducted training workshops.OM (Outcome Mapping)
I am familiar with it, I use it or parts of it. It is the first time using it in this project. I have done two workshops with Bea Briggs, a Mexico-based facilitator: on in February and September, 2007.How would you differentiate between outputs and outcomes?

My team has had long discussions on this. The bottom line is: Outcomes are behavioural changes (take-in, take-on, take-over), while Outputs are tangible data, reports, tend to be easy to measure but not representative.

MSC (Most Significant Change)
Have heard about it.

Other approaches

What other approaches do you use?

LF have to be done, for example for the (Canadian) Treasury Board.

How much attention do you want us to give to LogFrames?

Provide brief review – LF is our starting point.

How much attention do you want us to give to ICT indicators?
Please include an interactive session on ICT indicators.

I was not sure what was meant by “ICT indicators” but guessed through an example about phone or Internet penetration. I normally use UN indicators and therefore I would welcome a review of it.Preference for the reference materials to take home:
Electronic copies only.

Provide your three main expectations for this workshop.

To get a better sense of evaluation in the context of ICT4D, I am a learner. Is there a trend, preference, to get a sense.

To be able to make connections with new colleagues, get a sense of their trends, these contact give us support.

To know upon leaving she want to be able to answer the question “now what?” Hint: not a one shot deal. Her students use wikis, podcasts; maybe each one can do a pod-cast. We could cut and paste the 45-minute presentations by the facilitators. In the Caribbean she will be introducing them to podcasting, so she can use the example.

Would you be willing and able to prepare a poster to visualize and summarize your project?

She hates posters! They are static. She is campaigning to replace posters with something more interactive because they are flat. She proposes a video: She has a short videos that can be viewed with special glasses on from CD player. She proposes a 3-8 minute podcast where she can talk with a passion!